Carly Fiorina, who won the GOP primary for the U.S. Senate in California, spent much of her first day as nominee talking about hair after an on-camera gaffe.

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Fiorina, the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, is challenging incumbent Sen. Barbara Boxer, a Democrat. As she waited in a studio Wednesday to be interviewed by a Sacramento television station, she passed the time checking her BlackBerry and chatting, apparently without realizing her banter was being recorded.

"Laura saw Barbara Boxer briefly on television this morning and said what everyone says, 'God, what is that hair?' Soooooooo yesterday," Fiorina said.

Within hours, video of Fiorina repeating a friend's criticizism of Boxer's hair was widely disseminated and the Fiorina campaign was in damage control mode.

During an interview Wednesday on Fox News Channel, Fox anchor Greta Van Susteren reminded Fiorina everybody has "suffered from the old bad hair," The New York Times reported Thursday.

"Oh, you know, I was, I was quoting a friend of mine," Fiorina said. "My goodness, my hair's been talked about by a million people, you know? It sort of goes with the territory."

Bruce E. Cain, a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, told the Times "it is not a good way to start a woman-on-woman race by playing into negative stereotypes about female culture."

"The fact is that some voters, including many women, find this interesting and no doubt form their character judgments on such matters," Cain said.

The Boxer campaign used the gaffe as an opportunity to challenge Fiorina's seriousness on the issues.

"Let her talk about hair; we're talking about jobs," Boxer's campaign manager, Rose Kapolczynski, said.